17 replies to this topic

[BSLChrisStoner]

3255 hits, 504 homers. 

[BSLChrisStoner]

66 years old today.

[BSLChrisStoner]

My favorite player as a kid.

 

https://www.baseball...murraed02.shtml

[BSLChrisStoner]

[BSLChrisStoner]

[BSLChrisStoner]

[Old Man]

Love and respect this player for all that he did for the Orioles.

 

Watching him and Cal Jr play, was magical.

[Mike B]

Eddie, with the exception of Frank, may have been the most clutch player in Oriole history.

[Mike B]

Eddie is also the reason, that whenever I hear Stan Charles on the radio or TV, I immediately flip the channel

[1970]

My favorites went like this: Frank and Brooks to Bobby Grich to Eddie.  There was nothing more magical than the Eddie-Eddie chant at Memorial Stadium followed by Eddie getting a big hit.  I saw two of his grand slams in person at Memorial Stadium, including one on August 16, 1981 against the White Sox.  That game also featured the first major league hit for a young infielder by the name of Cal Ripken, Jr.  It was Cal’s second major league start and first as a SS.  Eddie hit a GS in the third and sent the game into extra innings with a 2-run shot in the ninth.  Unfortunately, the Orioles lost in the 10th.  Dave Ford took the loss.  As he was coming up some were calling him a young Jim Palmer.  His career would last another two games.  To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen  “Dave, you’re no Jim Palmer.”

[BSLChrisStoner]

Orioles.com: Top 10 moments of Eddie Murray's career

https://www.mlb.com/...-career-moments

[Nigel Tufnel]

Posnanski on Murray, as part of his '10 players who just missed the top 100' series.

 

Ten Who Missed: No. 9, Eddie Murray - by Joe Posnanski (substack.com)

[1970]

That list of players from his area is unbelievable.

[BSLChrisStoner]

[Mike B]

I think Eddie was the best clutch hitter the Orioles ever had.

 

He should have been an Oriole throughout his career.

[weird-O]

I once heard that the local press became antagonistic toward Eddie, because he was a quiet character, and didn't want the team leader role. The press piled on him, to the point that he and the team thought it would be better if he had a change of scenery. I don't know if that's true. But it's a shame if it was.   

[Nigel Tufnel]

Didn't EBW criticize Eddie for letting the team down, because he wasn't hitting for power in a year where he was playing hurt?  And then Eddie got pissed at EBW, and started to visibly sulk on the field, which turned the fans against him?  That's the way I remember it. 

 

I'm glad all was forgiven a few years later, first when he was with Cleveland and especially when he came back to the O's.

[mdrunning]

Didn't EBW criticize Eddie for letting the team down, because he wasn't hitting for power in a year where he was playing hurt?  And then Eddie got pissed at EBW, and started to visibly sulk on the field, which turned the fans against him?  That's the way I remember it. 

 

I'm glad all was forgiven a few years later, first when he was with Cleveland and especially when he came back to the O's.

You remember it correctly. Eddie also expressed concern over the deterioration of the Orioles' farm system, which forced them to go heavily into free agency in the mid-1980s. Instead of producing players like himself and Cal, the Orioles were now churning out the likes of Larry Sheets and Jim Traber.

 

There was a series against the Yankees in 1987, I believe it was, when the Orioles were dropping like a stone. Some of the Yankee players said afterward they couldn't believe how disengaged Eddie seemed by then. He'd stand at his position with his arms folded until almost the crack of the bat. It just seemed like Eddie's relationship with the club deteriorated about as rapidly as the team's overall fortunes.

 

Maybe Eddie brought some of it on himself; as he got older his middle got bigger and his biceps got softer. He was never known for offseason conditioning and it probably caught up to him as he got north of 30 years old. He could also be a little lackadaisical at times in the field, and never knocked himself out during spring training, but when he was consistently producing 30 HR, 100 RBI seasons, and the Orioles were winning 90-plus games every season, no one gave a damn. But when his numbers declined and the Orioles fortunes fell off dramatically, he became the poster boy for everything that was wrong with the franchise. 

 

It's a shame, because for the first eight or nine years of his career, Eddie epitomized everything that was right with the Orioles. Back then, it seemed like it could go on forever.